


The Man Who Used To Live

by chantefable



Series: Beltane Collection [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Anger, Auror Harry Potter, Aurors, Beltane, Daily Prophet, Depression, Gen, Healer Draco, House Elves, Immigration & Emigration, M/M, One Night Stands, Politics, Public Relations, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Auror Harry Potter is used to the unpleasant and the unexpected. He is not quite comfortable with the idea that the most unpleasant and unexpected thing in his own life is, well, himself. But he's getting there, and hopefully, one day all will be well.</p><p>(In which Harry is dissatisfied with his job, reads the Daily Prophet, overindulges in strong spirits, and is surprised in his own kitchen.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man Who Used To Live

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheMightyFlynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMightyFlynn/gifts).



The morning was relentless, dragging sharp light into every tiny corner that had previously been warm and dark. It spewed dew everywhere, with thick, glimmering drops slovenly clinging to the grass stalks and kicked-up lumps of dirt in the garden. It shoved fine, bright beams through the cracks in the shutters and the slits between doors and thresholds. Daylight crawled up every wall, swift and pale and nauseatingly yellow, until Harry Potter had no choice but to admit that he had woken up.

He crawled from under the sheets, feeling slimy and stale. He had fallen asleep in his boots again. Yesterday's clothes pulled and chafed on his overheated skin. As he steadied himself with a hand on the wall, Harry caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror – pale, haggard, and his nose never healed right after he used _Episkey_ on himself in the field two years ago. It was the kind of face that belonged in the small old mirror, with its frame crooked and dusty and its surface speckled with tiny black dots – only the better to match the peeling flower wallpaper, similarly littered with traces of intrusive, overconfident flies.

It was not the kind of face that Harry Potter liked seeing in the mirror, but that could not be helped.

He crossed the cramped hallway and unlocked the front door, picking up the morning _Prophet_ from the porch. It was damp, the front page soft and curling, and had slight claw marks in the middle. The morning was louder outside, the birds chirping insistently. Harry slammed the door shut and made his way to the kitchen.

The light was awful. It must have been the light, peeling back his eyelids and jabbing icy bright fingers straight into the sockets, until objects stood out in sharp relief, alien and uninteresting. A dirty saucepan. A tea kettle. A cracked jar of marmalade, oozing orange and covered in bloody flies. Everything made Harry's skin crawl. It must have been the light; his hangover wasn't nearly as bad.

He made tea, gritting his teeth against the headache. The tea bag landed softly on the stained bottom of the 'MLE Employee of the Year' mug. (He hated it, and the mug knew it.) Closing the rattling spoons drawer with his hip, Harry pulled a soiled doily from underneath the marmalade jar and spread it over the scratched corner of the table before plopping down a mug of tea.

He sat down in the creaking chair and watched the fragrant, bitter steam rise in finicky curlicues, floating with the myriads of dust particles in the air. The air reeked of boredom and neglect. It was a particularly rank, putrid smell that Harry associated with himself.

He took a sip of his brew and burned his tongue.

Harry was not a good Auror. He was a mediocre Ministry employee, withholding consent in what turned out to be inconsequential details and nodding along with the dastardly routine, only to shrivel and crawl back in his shell when it turned out he had blinked past something actually important. To the Ministry, this was bearable, the occasional nuisance of inopportune histrionics well worth the self-congratulatory pleasure of having him in the ranks. To Harry, it was like pulling teeth, and he did it day after day with morbid zeal.

But he was not a good Auror.

He could tell by the crisp silence that lingered around him once the excruciating debriefings were over, once the reports were painstakingly completed. He could tell by the way he was always a bit late to figure things out, to assess and react. By the way he walked at a brisk pace past people who turned out to need comfort. By the way he pursued those who then turned out to have done nothing wrong at all, but were merely unpleasant to him. He could tell by the way he was always too quick to jump at conclusions, to jab his wand at things and demand answers.

He could tell by the way other Aurors spent time with him, bickering in the Ministry lift and going for a pint at the Leaky Cauldron – always with something shuttered in their eyes, candour buried under the empty shells of social niceties, distant to the point of absence because no one would truly trust him. No one saw fit to tell him things.

And really, he thought, gulping down tea even as it scalded the roof of his mouth and his throat, small wonder his colleagues at the Ministry would leave him in the dark about the intricacies of departmental politics if even Hermione wouldn't tell him what was going on. Something was afoot, something was always afoot, but he could never tell which way the wind was blowing.

The tea left a tangy, bitter aftertaste in his mouth before settling in his stomach. An ugly, hot feeling. The nausea was sickening. His pulse hammered heavily in his temples.

Ron never told him anything, either. He hadn't even known about Ginny's wedding until the week before the fact, had he. Oblivious, kept in the dark. Not to be trusted, prone to doing or saying something stupid and unnecessary. If that was what they thought of him. Harry couldn't tell anymore, but that was certainly what he thought of himself.

And also, he was not a good Auror, Harry thought, nodding emphatically as the ruthless sunlight kept streaming through the windows, making every shabby surface of his kitchen gleam like the pale underbelly of a dead fish. What was he like, really? He was like a Niffler. He picked up a trail and he stayed on it, all the way down to the buried treasure, not a care for what was happening around him. Like, for instance, people getting hurt. People, as Harry discovered, tended to have a lot of feelings, and he only understood half of those. He was used to having a lot of feelings of his own, but, strangely, they not always matched the feelings of other people in similar situations.

He could do this all day, Harry thought, mouth curving involuntarily in a smirk. He had a day off on account of Beltane, after all, and he could wallow in morose self-pity all day, if he so wished. It was not an unfamiliar past-time.

He hunched over the table and stretched out his arm, reaching for the _Daily Prophet_ that lay, slightly crumpled, on the other side of the kitchen table. Doing so, he caught a whiff of his own smell, yesterday's sweat and grime and unwashed clothes. 

Teddy kept telling him, with the self-assured confidence of a teenager – Harry had no idea where he was getting it from, for _he_ certainly had not possessed that kind of gravity and aplomb at that age – Teddy kept telling him that Harry needed to make an effort to appear more kempt. Apparently that would make him more grounded and clear his head. But Teddy was also telling him that Harry shouldn't be leaving Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place to rot and gather dust under lock and key just because Harry liked it unchanged and smelling of the past whenever the mood struck him to haunt the place and soak up old memories. Teddy was also telling him that playing at eternal boyhood and never having a serious relationship apart from adolescent flings was uninspiring and unattractive.

Teddy was a real treasure-trove of wisdom and precocious insight. 

Teddy could shut his gob.

The paper rustled softly as Harry spread it across his lap. The pages dragged over the fabric of his trousers, a ghost of a shiver spreading through his skin under clothing. His stomach tightened uncomfortably, muted sensations shooting through his body in the space of a heartbeat: a hot, frenzied touch quickly mapping his skin; a strong body stretching alongside his, agile and demanding; a harsh, breathless laugh trapped against the fluttering pulse point in his own neck. A voice in his ear, low with an undercurrent of powerful confidence, rich and velvety. 

The sensations were disturbing, dream-like; too strange to be a memory.

Harry brushed them off and scanned the pages. Here was the celebration of the latest Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes gadget; there, a cringe-worthy nostalgic puff piece about the good old days of British magical music brought about by yet another Celestina Warbeck's 'Best Of...' compilation. Buried among the dreadfully detailed accounts of the latest Quidditch matches, Pride of Portree vs. Caerphilly Catapults and Tutshill Tornadoes vs. Banchory Bangers, was an article about house elves desperately trying to cross the North Sea. Denmark was experiencing an influx of illegal immigrants from Britain ever since they passed the Abolition of House Elves Bond Magic Act. 

Teddy had told him, with militant glee bubbling inside his chest as if he were an overheated cauldron of revolutionary fervour, that Hogwarts was abandoned by so many of the 'so-called staff, when everyone knows it was slave labour' that they had to hire actual servants, and in great numbers, too.

This was probably why, according to yet another short article of actual substance, 'Squib Employment Rates Have Been Successfully Improving'.

(Harry had a hunch that Teddy was personally involved in smuggling those house elves asylum seekers out of Hogwarts. What with the Marauders' Map and the knowledge of secret passageways, functional and defunct, the obscure magic inappropriate for his age that Malfoy stubbornly denied teaching him, the git, his Metamorph abilities and the seething anger that filled him to the tips of his colour-changing hair, Teddy was a potentially dangerous person. But somehow, Harry was the only one to recognise that and it wasn't like he was going to tell on Teddy, right. Even if Teddy was doing something that was probably illegal.) 

(Most likely, even if he was doing something _definitely_ illegal, come to think of it.)

Harry turned the page with one hand and reached for the tea with the other, spilling some droplets of deep brown fluid right on the photograph where the Ministry's Muggle Liaison was shaking the hand of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who was smiling woodenly and obviously had very little idea about sustainably grown Flitterbloom and Pixie-dust soil fertilisation which were discussed at length in the accompanying article on subsidies.

The sight of spilled tea was upsetting somehow. Something kept tugging on Harry's memory, eager to pull out a random strand buried deep under the heavy oblivion of anger and alcohol. He hadn't gone easy on himself the previous night. His fingers were wet with too-warm liquid now; he put the mug back on the table and sucked the fingers into his mouth. He couldn't remember... _something_ ; instead, he thought of calloused fingers clutching his own in a tight grip, then sliding up to dig deeply into the flesh of his forearm, with short-clipped fingernails leaving little half-moon bruises all over.

It was ridiculous. He thought of pulling up the sleeves of his hopelessly rumpled, sour-smelling shirt, almost convinced he would actually see abused skin; the passing fancy pressed so hard on his consciousness that Harry could swear his arms began to tingle and the little hairs on them stood on end.

He shook his head. He hated being hung over.

(Obviously, not enough to stop drinking, but still.)

Just as Harry was about to turn the page over again, a small headline caught his eye.

_The Man Who Used To Live._

He picked up the mug again, frowning at the wet halo-shaped smudge it had left on the scratched wooden surface of the table. 

It couldn't be about him. Nobody wrote about him anymore. After all, nobody cared for heroes past their prime who had exhausted their usefulness to the public agenda. The _Prophet_ used to be snapping on his heels, intrusive and overbearing, shoving its filthy muzzle in every part of Harry's life that was private and loudly voicing condemnation and displeasure. Nowadays, however, the _Daily Prophet_ was more like a careless parent: gushing annoyance and disapproval in passing, but only at times, so rarely it almost felt like affection. And just like the other ominous force that had been involved in Harry's life for far too long, the Ministry of Magic, the _Prophet_ was hardly ever of a mind to discipline.

Fortified by lukewarm tea and cold, rational thoughts, Harry looked down at the paper.

The headline still stared up at him, taunting.

_The Man Who Used To Live._

The article was small. Tiny. A handful of words. Maybe a generous paragraph. A snippet. Hardly a match for the epic barbs of Rita Skeeter. Nevertheless, it cut Harry to the quick the way few other things did these days. 

_"Following his brash and romantic dalliance with war, the celebrated Chosen One kept jilting fame until, caught on yet another rebound, he gave his hand and heart to the poor old Plain Jane of pursuits, the Ministry of Magic. He flattered her image; and, with the Auror position keeping him at heel as good as the old ball and chain, she began exuding a borrowed charm, becoming richer, younger, more put together with each passing year..."_

He read the words over and over again, irked that he had been reduced to some off-hand, almost philosophical interlude. Stuffed in to fill the space, to keep the layout neat. An editor's patch-up job for the spread, like a bit of history trivia about Helena Ravenclaw or a life-drawing of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. He felt his jaws clench.

They wrote about him as if he were an ageing rake who had married an old matron. The erstwhile Saviour of the Wizarding World who had given away his soul to the decrepit, barren, priggish hag: the Ministry. A piece of glorified glamour for the weak old system, a trophy husband. That was what he was: a had-been, now comfortably living on his looks.

It hurt, a real, visceral kind of deep hurt, because it had hit the nail on the head.

Grinding his teeth, Harry balled up the newspaper and threw the misshapen paper sphere in the sink.

Had he done himself a disservice by joining the Ministry? He rubbed his stubbled face with the calloused palms of his hands, and thought of his reflection in the old fly-marked mirror, tired, unkempt, and permanently unhappy. His own answer was a resounding yes. 

But had he done the world a disservice by joining the Ministry, too? What a quaint thought this early in the morning, and no Firewhisky to dilute it with. Had he inadvertently given credibility to the justly weakened, rotten and corrupt Ministry when it had been done in, drained by civil strife? Had he helped it to attract and ensnare new people, fresh meat with unspoiled ideas, now transformed to docile bureaucratic fodder?

(Yes.) He was not drunk enough for such piercing thoughts. (Yes.) They would have to go away and wait, stay lurking in the shadowed corners of his mind where they usually stuck, prickly and disgusting.

(Yes.)

There was a knock on the door. 

Harry rose and the world tilted sharply, the cruel sunlight fracturing into quick, cruel flashes in front of his eyes. The chair landed on the sticky floor with a dull thud.

There was a knock on the door, but it came from inside the house.

Harry's house. His old little cottage away from prying eyes.

There was a knock on the open kitchen door. 

Harry swayed on his feet slightly and turned around. His eyes darted from the short, pale grey shadow cautiously creeping through the doorway, to the open plywood door, with glue so old and dried out the splintered edges looked like puff pastry, to the hand still frozen above the door's uneven surface, lingering after the last knock.

Draco Malfoy was slouching in the doorway. The deep, bluish shadows under his eyes made his nose stand out even more prominently in his face, puffy with sleep and spirits. Malfoy was leaning against the doorframe on one shoulder; when he saw that he had finally caught Harry's attention, he brought his hand back and began finger-combing his lightly sweat-matted hair away from his face.

Like Harry, Malfoy was obviously wearing yesterday's clothes, which had to be at least part of the reason why Malfoy's thin lips were now twisted in distaste and annoyance.

That, and he was in Harry's house for some reason.

Harry took several steps forward, squinting against the sunlight and Malfoy's half-hearted glare. Malfoy smelled like Harry's bed. 

Here was another reason for Malfoy's pinched expression.

It was strange; Harry hadn't even noticed Malfoy when he had woken up and crawled out of his den. He should have, because Malfoy was an eyesore as usual, still wearing the lime green shirt that was supposed to match his Healer's robes when he was on shift.

His tongue was uncomfortably heavy in his mouth, and Harry couldn't force it to move and articulate a greeting when all his rapidly dwindling brainpower was being spent wondering what Malfoy was even doing here on this appalling morning. They usually couldn't spare him on Beltane, swamped with patients with fireworks burns and arcane ritual traumas. Last year, Harry ended up interviewing a suspect in some nefarious aphrodisiac bonfire scam right in St Mungo's ward, with Malfoy conjuring the poor sod's restraints with one hand and potions with the other.

Malfoy's presence didn't add up somehow, Harry thought, and then – 

He suddenly remembered twisting around until they were pressed close, chest to chest, and leaning back to take on some of Malfoy's weight. He remembered sliding down the wall, earning a short groan in response even as he spread his thighs wider and rubbed himself up against the warm weight of Malfoy's straining cock. He also remembered holding on to the curve of Malfoy's hip, the wool soft and itchy under his sweat-slick palm, and the awkward certainty that his mouth had been stretched wide in a happy smile when his other hand had snuck under Malfoy's shirt and rubbed sure circles on the tender skin of his soft belly and the small of his back.

The memories tumbled past one another and blew up in vivid colour, like a particularly wicked game of Exploding Snap. He tasted salt and iron from Malfoy's biting kiss, and then recalled the chocolate and vanilla flavours of Moldovan brandy, a gift from Viktor Krum that they had obviously sampled the night before. He felt the weight of Malfoy across his thighs, squirming in his lap as he tilted Harry's head up with both hands for a kiss, and then recalled the sure grip of his handshake, the heavy, amiable slap between his shoulder blades. They had been getting drunk together at the Hog's Head. 

(It must have been the Hog's Head. Harry did not drink at the Leaky Cauldron anymore. Hannah's peach schnapps was excellent, but her disapproving stare was anything but.)

Mentally, Harry kicked himself. They must have Apparated drunk, all the way from Hogsmeade. It was a wonder none of them ended up Splinched. A wonder, or a sign that Malfoy had Side-Alonged Harry. Still, that was enough of a risk – he had only invited Malfoy once before, to talk about Teddy. Or rather, to yell at him about teaching the boy more magic than was safe or useful (Harry's words), and to be yelled at about the skills and knowledge necessary for survival and informed choices (Malfoy's words). In all honesty, that memory was tinged with red and rage, and hazy around the edges. Not as clear as the one from yesterday, of Malfoy choking down a helpless whine as he mouthed at Harry's neck, pulling off the cloak from his shoulders in a swift angry motion.

Harry also remembered wet streaks on his own cheeks, and gasps of satisfaction. Frankly, he wished he could remember less.

But, just like the thoughts that plagued him whether he doused them in Old Ogden's or not, just like the headaches and the bloody article from the _Daily Prophet_ , and Malfoy standing in his kitchen, unwashed and unrested, this, too, could not be helped.

Harry turned around to make fresh tea and let Malfoy get comfortable in the squalor of Harry's light-drenched kitchen. He knocked about looking for clean mugs, and listened to the wet sounds of Malfoy attempting to salvage the paper from the sink, half-slurp, half-rustle.

Of all the things that made Harry feel vaguely violated – the indifferent, placidly cheerful mornings that assaulted him time and time again as he wanted to wallow in self-pity; the unspecific regrets that made themselves known at odd times, as welcome as rusty nails under his fingernails would be; the uncomfortably insightful newspaper articles; his own godson's careless jabs and judging looks – of all these things, Malfoy's presence in Harry's orbit, and now, the phantom feel of his body under Harry's hungry hands, were somehow the least unnatural and unwelcome.

Strange, that.


End file.
